[These comments are taken from a mailing list discussion and as such are out of context (and may not make sense) and also contain spoilers.]

[on characters, setting]

I haven’t finished the book and I’m not sure I’m going to so I’ll wade in on the questions.

I think the characters in this book have the potential to be interesting but they just aren’t seeming interesting to me. I liked the look of Mike and Dan Smith when we met them, and the despatcher Sally too but the characters seem to fade in and out and don’t come to life. I’d read several chapters when I realised I didn’t even know the main character’s name and had to look at the back cover to find out he was called Carl. I think I’d noticed the name Carl but thought it was being applied to someone else. (It’s not that I think knowing the main characters name is essential {eg Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is better for leaving it out} but here I felt it was symbolic of the fact that I wasn’t getting the hang of these people at all.)

The setting isn’t coming to life for me much either. Without going and looking at the book I couldn’t tell you where it was set other than somewhere in America. It’s a smallish town surrounded by isolated farms and there’s a big city some way away but I haven’t remembered where that is and I’ve got no idea what sort of countryside is around about either.

[on scenes, pacing]

I’ve skipped the plot question because I didn’t finish the book and it seems unfair to comment. Plus this question gets more to the heart of what I found to be my problem with this book.

I thought the opening scenes of this book were really good and I was very much sucked into the book and wanted to find out was happening. I thought the minute by minute style of following the police around worked really well… for a while. Everytime I picked the book up it felt like getting back on a roller coaster and for a bit I enjoyed it a lot but it started to get tedious and make me sick after a while (analogically I mean though the crime was pretty sickening anyway). I would have liked the pace to have slowed a little every now and again. I think the author tried to do this by having Carl injured for a few days but I didn’t really feel any let up in the pace of the book.

I think less haste would have made more speed for me. One of the problems I had was that the book was full of a lot of the kind of nitty-gritty detail about police investigations that I enjoy, but I was careering past it at breakneck speed and not really comprehending it.

I think this is probably a case of the book just not fitting my mood at the time I was reading it. Another time I think I’d have liked the book just fine and I’m interested to see how I get on with the next book in the series.